


Crashed Shuttle

by kathrynmc



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Concussed Narrator, Concussions, F/M, Flash Fic, Gen, Head Injury, Hurt, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Major Character Injury, Short & Sweet, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-11
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2020-06-26 04:38:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19760761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kathrynmc/pseuds/kathrynmc
Summary: Scene inspired by "Coda", but with Tom Paris. Not romantic.





	Crashed Shuttle

No, he was not going to be able to ignore that blaring alarm and slip back into blissful unconsciousness.

No, that klaxon was going to bore straight into his aching skull over and over and over again.

Tom lifted his throbbing head from the darkened conn, his nose and eyes objecting to the acrid smoke that filled the shuttle. A moment later, he broke into coughs as breath hit the back of his throat. This was what the computer's warning had been about, wasn't it. Some kind of coolant leakage. A new wave of dizziness seized him. He had to think — had to move. Evacuate downed shuttle. He was in a downed shuttle. They had crashed... who... His chest seized. Ka— the captain. She had been sitting right next to him. He twisted in his seat and there — lying as if she'd been thrown, she lay terribly still, a deep gash on her forehead bleeding sluggishly.

He half-stumbled, half-crawled to her. Automatically, his fingers went to her pulse. Her skin was clammy. He pressed harder, searching. Her face was very pale. "No!" He realized he'd gasped it out loud. "Come on," he willed himself to focus. He went to the back, where the shuttle doors were jammed. Fastening the magnetic clamp and pushing the doors open, he suddenly gulped a welcome breath of wet night air. He grabbed the medkit from the wall, slung it across his body, and then he was kneeling and trying to cradle her head. He had to move her. The gas — the coolant — it was bad in here. If she had a spinal injury... no, he had to move her. Three, two, one— with her head cradled in his elbow, his hand spread between her shoulders, he scooped his other arm under her knees, stood, hoisted her close; disturbed once again at how small and light was Kathryn Janeway.

He concentrated on his footing as he stepped out of the shuttle, and then on picking out some semblance of shelter. The wind was billowing with fat drops of rain, and somewhere off to his right he could hear sheets of rain pounding down on wide foliage. No sooner did he set Kathryn down in the lee of a rocky outcropping than the wind shifted and the downpour drenched them.

"Dammit, dammit." He was fumbling for her pulse again. Putting his cheek to her mouth. He couldn't hear over the storm, but he also felt no warm breath on his cheek. Dammit, FUCK. His hands were slick against the medkit as he clicked its clasps and speed-loaded a hypo of adrenaline. Shot her up. Tilted her head back, his hand now slick with her blood, her mouth slack and parted, his fingers pinching her nose. He took a deep breath and sealed his mouth over hers and pushed the air into her lungs, came up, sucked in another gulp. Went down again, two, three, four, came up fully, released her head. Hands before him, one palm over the back of the other hand, felt for her sternum, came down hard but not too hard, his fear of breaking her battling with his memory of an instructor saying that a person can live with a broken sternum but can't live without air.

Chest compressions. Dun dun dun stain' alive, stayin' alive. Nine, ten. Back to breaths. One. Two. Three. Four. Compressions. One —

As he bore down on her she spasmed and sputtered and drew a shaking breath. It came out as a low cry of pain, but even that flooded him with relief. He crouched low over her to shelter her as much as he could from the wind and rain. "Easy, easy." He kept his hand protectively between her collarbones, pinning her shoulders against any unplanned movement. But all she could manage was to cough weakly as she tried to speak. "M'alright," she coughed, as if she could barely believe it herself. She breathed. "I'm alright."

"You gave me quite a scare there." He didn't like how much his voice was shaking. How he was trembling in the cold rain. Remembering the feel of his fingers rooting in her clammy neck skin for a pulse he couldn't find.

Her hand scrabbled up to pull at his sleeve. He looked down at her, the mess of blood and hair on her forehead, her eyes dark in the evening storm. "Tom," He didn't like how she slurred her words. "Stay with me." She jerked on his sleeve for emphasis. He blinked and put a hip down, tired of crouching over her. "Tom!" There was real alarm in her voice. He hated to think she was scared. He made sure to tilt his body so that he lay himself down next to her. She probably needed the heat... She was tugging insistently. "Tom, I need you to stay with me. Talk to me. Tom, I don't think I can — ugh — acht —" she was moving, for some reason, hoisting herself to be seated, swaying, catching herself on his body now lying next to her in the rain. He could see her reach for the medkit, pulling it into her lap. She was tall from where he lay. Suddenly she made a small sound, her eyes closed and she leaned heavily back onto the rocky outcropping, her hand pressed to her head. Watching her take some slow breaths there made Tom's eyelids droop closed too. If only it weren't raining on his face. His face, close to the ground, next to Kathryn's thigh... the hiss of a hypospray. She had injected herself with something. She was preparing another hypospray, for some reason, and then he felt the small firm brush of her fingers against his neck, holding him still, and the press of the cold metal...

Holy shit. Awareness rushed back to him. He sat up a little too quickly. "Sorry. Captain. I don't know what—"

Her voice was strained. "We both have concussions." She sounded exhausted. "Right now we need shelter. Over there, more rocks."

His legs weren't rubbery anymore. He knew he could stand but she sure looked like she couldn't. And there was some doubt in his mind about his ability to carry her.

She had closed the medkit and swung the strap across her chest. "Can you get up, Mr. Paris?" She was using her command voice. It was good to hear.

"Yes ma'am." He pushed back up to crouching, and put an arm around her to support her as they tried standing together. He felt her lean unsteadily into him, and for a moment he was a pillar, her shelter against the rain, bent to hold her and shield her. Then he felt her weight give way and he caught her against his chest. "Oh no, no, you have to help out." He hoisted her against him and started putting one foot in front of the other, heading in the direction she had pointed, amidst tall outcroppings. He bent down to catch her under the knees and hefted her up all the way. She was light enough that it was just going to be easier this way. A flash of lightning illuminated her wet, bloody face as her head dangled upside down in his carry, and he remembered that he would have to seal her head wound because she was still dribbling blood.

A ledge in the rocky hillside provided enough shelter that at least one of them could stay out of the driving rain. He lay her down, limp and unresponsive, breathing shallowly. Took off his soaked jacket and used the sleeve to wipe off her face, pulled out the dermal regenerator and ran it over her, and then himself. He touched his bruised head gingerly. They both had concussions, yeah. Not a great situation. He was cold without his jacket, but too tired to wrestle back into it. He draped it over his shoulders and lay himself down between her and the rain. He readjusted, pulled his jacket under his head to use as a pillow. His face was very close to hers, he thought dimly as he drifted. There was no way he was going to stay conscious. They would just have to risk it...

"Tom!" The rain was gone. Birds were singing. The bottom part of his leg was in the sun and drying off. His captain was pinned between him and a large overhanging boulder. Everything smelled like mud and musty wet clothes. Her arms were under her as she lay on the stony ground. At the sight of him opening his eyes, her face noticeably relaxed. "The weather's cleared up," she said, as if they weren't both lying soaked and injured after crash-landing with Voyager a week away.

He pulled himself out from their low makeshift shelter, ignoring the wave of dizziness and the hint of nausea. With more space now, she worked her arms out from under her. He didn't like the way she moved, as if every movement took nearly all her energy. "Give me a hand out?" She reached out, and he grasped her arm and slid her from under the ledge. Even then, she didn't move to sit up, but closed her eyes for a moment as she lay on her back breathing shallowly. He felt around for his tricorder, realizing that it must have fallen out of its holster sometime last night. Hers, he could see, was still attached to her waist. They both had their phasers, and they still had the medkit. "I'm very dizzy," she murmured from the ground, where she still had her eyes squeezed shut. Then, "I think it's passing."

He was concerned about his own mental state. Everything felt like it was passing a little too slowly, a bit disconnected, but he didn't want to say so and give her something else to worry about.

"Take a moment," he said. "I'll go check on the shuttle." He wanted to give her the space to fix up her dignity. He knew how much that meant to her. Besides, he needed to take a piss.

He was in the shuttle when she caught up to him, her hair in a ponytail and her bladder presumably relieved. She looked almost normal, except for the dark bruising across half her forehead. "How does it look?" she asked, of the shuttle.

"A mixed blessing," he replied. "Everything wrong with her is fixable, but it would take us weeks. The subspace transceiver, though, is wrecked. We can only send a local distress call."

"We'd better get to work, then."

They inventoried the problems and got started. His head was feeling noticeably clearer. He kept stealing glances at her, and she seemed perfectly focused on her work.

"I'm going to take a break and have a ration," he said eventually, once his stomach was truly distracting him from the relay he was splicing. "You want one?"

"No thanks," she muttered, twiddling with something in the EPS access hatch.

He came back with a water pack for her, and placed a second ration within arm's reach.


End file.
